New Workstation/Gaming Build

[visonare]

Summary: I'm looking to build a mini-server/gaming PC at the same time if I can swing it.  Expanded goals in 2.) aim but the tldr version is a gaming platform that is equiv or better than my existing 3770k/1080gtx with expanded core count.  Currently pondering Threadripper, might just do 8700k and break out the server into it's own build.

 

I've built a few PC's prior to this and do server architecture but I would love to get some additional opinions/ideas from the community.  First time poster, long time lurker.

 

I know enough about overclocking to be dangerous and have used air coolers/AIO's up this point.

 

1. Budget & Location
I'm in the United States.  I'm prepared to spend around 3k initially.

2. Aim
I do like to game.  I primarily enjoy strategy games like XCOM, Civ6, Total War, etc but do play the occasional MMORPG or RPG like Witcher 3.  Destiny 2, Shadow of War, maybe Battlefront (micro-transactions eww) are games I plan on playing once they are released.  Currently I do fairly well at high/ultra settings with my 3770k and 1080 gtx and I mostly just want to be sure that a new build will give me a reasonable upgrade/keep me at par for gaming while giving me a boost in work workloads.  I need core count to test/lab out certain infrastructure design projects and run a few always-on VM's.  Vertica/DBMS/BI tools, VDI, GNS3 (networking virt labs), etc.  To be clear, I know I don't NEED more than 6-8 cores for that use case, but upgrading from 4 to 6 feels lackluster and 4 does feel a bit constraining now.  I typically have a few VM's running at a time for various management functions.  I don't stream, render, etc.  Every once in awhile I'll whip out handbrake but that isn't common.  12 cores seems like the sweet spot to me if the frequency downgrade won't kill me on gaming performance.

 

3. Monitors
I currently run a single x34 (34" 3440 x 1440 G-Sync  display 75mhz).  I run an HDTV to my graphics card from an adjacent room to watch basketball but when I do I'm not using the primary display.  If I do ever add additional monitors, it would be for productivity screen real estate and I could just turn them off when gaming.

4. Peripherals
I don't need an OS.  I probably could use a new mouse/keyboard.  I'm willing to wait on that though as what I have is functional, so meh.

 

5. Why are you upgrading?

Partially because it's time.  I've got an mSATA drive that's throwing SMART errors, a PCIe drive that is well past it's write endurance, a 5+ year old CPU, and slowish RAM.  I don't particularly want to spend money on a new mSATA drive (and I hate not being in RAID 1, my current MOBO supports only one mSATA), especially with M.2 being so cheap these days.  I currently have 32GB of RAM which is limiting VM capacity and my test bed for work-related things but I'm reluctant to spend money on additional DDR3 RAM.  Etc etc, basically IMO it's time for a platform upgrade.  My 3770K on an overclock has just been good enough for so long that I've held off.

 

Current thoughts:

I've been playing around with various ideas for builds.  I've been leaning towards Threadripper.  I like the idea of having PCIe lane count.  Two M.2's and my current 1080 take up 24 lanes, planning on a future 2nd 1080 for SLI would take 40.  Threadripper gives me PCIe lanes to spare for upgrades past that.  I also have 8/12/16c options.  I was thinking about the 12c to save $200 (I can't imagine needing those extra four cores) plus I would think that it would have a better overclocking potential, but so far the reviews I've read don't seem to indicate that it performs any better for O.C. vs the 16c. 

 

I'm a little worried about gaming potential.  I don't want to spend 3k on a new PC to find out that Threadripper is bottlenecking my existing 1080, let alone a second one, and that I need to buy a separate gaming PC to power my monitor.  In that scenario I'd be better off going 8700k for the extra 500mhz or so of O.C. potential and planning for an additional server build than trying to knock out both at once.

 

The best I've been able to hit with my existing 3770k on an AIO is 4.5ghz.  I think right now I'm sitting at a stable 4.4.  It's hard to judge current architectures vs what I have because of IPC differences and the tests that are frequently shown.  From what I can tell 3440 x 1440 isn't nearly as demanding as 4k but is more demanding than 2k... which makes sense.  Unfortunately most gaming benchmarks seem to be geared towards those two resolutions and synthetic benchmarks don't really mean much for my work/lab workloads.  With a 75mhz monitor I'm not concerned with ridiculously high FPS, I just want to try to maintain 60+.  I honestly can't tell a difference past 60 fps, although I might just be old and decrepit.

  

Current Potential Parts List:

CPU: Ryzen Threadripper 1920x (799.99)

          Probably overkill, but I'd rather plan ahead than spend 2k but find out a year from now that I wish I had more cores and need to rebuild or add a server.  My 3770k lasted me a long, long time (partially because I DID have a server for                lab stuff).  I want this build to last me 3'ish years.  For work related tasks I know this is plenty, just worried about O.C./frequency/gaming.

GPU: Single EVGA 1080 GeForce GTX ACX 3.0.  (Existing, doesn't need to be purchased.  Perfectly willing to buy a second one later for SLI if bottlenecked at GPU, would be an awesome problem to have for the purpose of this build)

Motherboard: MSI X399 GAMING PRO CARBON AC (379.99 Amazon)

           I've always been partial to ASUS, but the Zenith is a little too rich for my blood and the MSI seems to support ECC should I choose to use it.

RAM: 64GB G.Skill F4-3200C16D-32GTZKW ($660 Amazon)

           I actually wish I could re-purpose some Server RAM here to save money, but from everything I've read Threadripper and Ryzen are extremely sensitive to RAM frequency and timing.  I've got plenty of Dell 2667mhz DDR4 CL17 ECC               RAM but that feels like just asking for trouble.  Obviously not on the QVL, slower timings, slower frequency, almost assuredly can't O.C. etc.  Real world impact?  No idea.  Would be a great place to save money though if you guys                     think I'd see minimal difference between it and say a 3200mhz kit.  Could potentially put in 128GB with what I have available.  I don't actually need that capacity currently with dynamic memory and such, but hey, it's fun to have right? 

Chassis: Haf-X (existing)

PSU: TBH I have no idea what I currently have.  I had one die on me earlier in the year and I think I replaced it with a 850w Corsair but I wouldn't swear to it and I'd be open to replacing it.  I'll update this tomorrow.

           I know that both Threadripper and the 8700K are hungry, hungry beasts  when O.C.  I don't mind replacing now if I have to but I had thought about just waiting until I buy a second 1080 if feasible.

HDD: 2 x 3TB Seagate 7.2k Barracudas.  ST3000DM008 ($160)  Just cheap bulk storage for my Roku media, backups, etc.

SSD: 2 x 1TB Intel 600p. ($700)

           Honestly the 960 EVO and PRO seem like overkill to me.  I use PCIe at work for server storage, but here's the thing.  I don't need huge sequential/random write for these drives.  Honestly for my typical VM workloads and gaming the              600p is overkill already.  For reads there isn't much difference.  I'd like to have the 1TB of space in RAID 1, I just don't see the use case for additional write throughput/IOPS.  If I develop one, then my client/main job can pay for                          P4500's/4600's.  I have 4 existing 480GB SATA SSD's for a relatively fast second tier of SATA SSD storage.

Radiator & Case Fans: I currently have a H110v2 and the stock fans for the HAF-X.  I'm tempted to go with my first custom loop for this build for at least the CPU, just to try to squeeze out every bit of O.C. that I can.  An EK loop is $448, which is worth it to me if it's the difference between getting ok vs great performance on the proc.  Say maybe the difference between getting 60+ FPS on most games at ultra/very high settings vs sub-60.  Not worth it for aesthetics alone to me for sure.  Supposedly the H110v2 works for Threadripper with the included bracket, but obviously doesn't cover the entire chip and this isn't an area I want to skimp on.

Operating System: Windows 10 Pro

TOTAL: ~2,700 USD without a new PSU/custom loop/with new RAM.  Probably more like ~3,400 with a custom loop/new PSU.

 

I also have an old 680 GTX gathering dust in my closet.  I've been toying with the idea of using it as a Phys-X GPU.  Would that actually be helpful as an offload/improve FPS?  I know not all games would utilize it and I've been much too lazy/busy so far to test it out since I got my 1080.  I've just been really lucky with my architecture/build decisions so far and I'm trying to maintain that streak.  My first PC build was off of the Q6600, then the 3770K and they both lasted me 4+ years.

 

Thanks in advance for any thoughts/suggestions.

 

 

 

[LtStaffel]

I skimmed all that. I recommend putting a summary at the top for those unwilling to read it in the depth I just did.

 

What are you doing that requires so much overall power and storage?

[LienusLateTips]

Threadripper has um

 

bad-meh gaming performance

[visonare]

@LtStaffel will do, testing for various lab/infrastructure projects.  Vertica, VDI, GNS3 network labs, etc.  Nothing that absolutely HAS to have more than 6-8 cores but would give me more realistic results.

 

My main thought was to save money overall by making a single purchase instead of getting a new lab server + gaming PC.  I've been lucky with my past builds and gotten 4+ year cycles out of them.  I like to upgrade once and be done with it for awhile.

 

Bad-meh gaming is my worry.

[Guest]

In terms of gaming performance, threadripper is more better optimised towards more heavier workloads such as content creation, rendering videos/video editing, and other tasks that require lots of cores/threads. For your requirements, the 8core/16thread ryzen 7 1800X will be enough for your workloads. You could also consider the i7 8700k, has faster singlethreaded performance which will benefit in games and productivity work.

PCPartPicker part list: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/CRsj6X
Price breakdown by merchant: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/CRsj6X/by_merchant/

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 7 1800X 3.6GHz 8-Core Processor  ($398.99 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: Corsair - H100i v2 70.7 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler  ($99.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: Asus - CROSSHAIR VI HERO ATX AM4 Motherboard  ($233.89 @ OutletPC)
Memory: Corsair - Dominator Platinum 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR4-3200 Memory  ($429.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung - 960 EVO 1TB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive  ($442.75 @ OutletPC)
Storage: Western Digital - Gold 6TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($232.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Video Card: Asus - GeForce GTX 1080 Ti 11GB STRIX GAMING Video Card  ($804.98 @ Newegg)
Case: NZXT - S340 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case  ($54.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Corsair - HX Platinum 1000W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply  ($199.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $2898.56
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-10-09 02:02 EDT-0400

[0x1e]

2 hours ago, visonare said:

<Snip>

 

 

I actually read it all....

TBH I would say stick with your gut.

You want a long lasting machine, a minimum of 3 years. Threadripper will give you that. Also AMD has said they will keep AM4 alive for at least 4 years (so you can keep your old motherboard for Zen2) and hopefully they will do the same with TR. Spend money now, save money later.

 

Gaming,

Don't worry about it. As shown in (Jayz2cents ?) video It's hard to bottleneck a GPU. On top of that a bottleneck wasn't shown until he used a 1080TI I believe.

The performance loss when gaming with TR is around 10-20FPS in a worst case. However you're still talking over 100FPS in most games. As you said, you have a 75Hz monitor and you personally don't notice a difference above 60FPS so you'll be fine gaming with TR. On top of that if you want to you can enable gaming mode or W/E it's called which separates the dies from each other so they don't share resources. You'll still have full access to all the cores, but a program can not jump dies. So if you go with a 1920x then programs will only have 6 cores to play with as they will only be on one die. They can choose either die. This will boost your FPS in nearly every game 5-15FPS.

 

You seem like you game in your spare time, but mostly work either professionally or for a hobby. Either way working seems like your main priority. So because of that I would recommend TR. Also you seem like you need the PCI-e lanes and rely on VM's.

 

Get TR, a good motherboard ( don't cheap out), get RAM that is on the QVL and faster the better, stick with your 1080, get a second in the future if you like which is what you siad, keep the PSU, keep your case, go custom water cooling if possible (budget) or get an AIO. and be done with it as you'll be fine.

[seon123]

You might want to consider Intel's HEDT CPUs? Significantly better per core performance, so it'll be better for gaming. The 10-core 7900X "only" costs $150 more than the 1920X, but offset by the, let's say, less expensive motherboard. The X299 TUF Mk 2 costs $250, so less than the X399 board. It has 2 M.2 slots, though I don't really see the point of it. 

Edited October 9, 2017 by seon123
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